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The UN has decided to tackle the issue of killer robots in 2017 | Recode.net

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The United Nations decided to formally address the issue of killer robots.

At the International Convention on Conventional Weapons in Geneva, the 123 participating nations voted to form a group in 2017 of governmental experts to look at lethal autonomous robots that can select targets without human control, which could lead to a ban, reported Human Rights Watch.

Many of Silicon Valley’s elite, including Steve Wozniak and Elon Musk, have expressed concern over the development of killer robots. Musk and Wozniak both signed on to a letter last year urging the UN to take up the issue, calling for an international ban on the creation of lethal autonomous weapons.

Stephen Hawking and leading AI researchers — including University of California Berkeley computer scientist Stuart Russell, Google Director of Research Peter Norvig and Microsoft Managing Director Eric Horvitz — were among the over 1,000 scientists who signed the letter calling for a killer robot ban.